Feeding swans can also lead to trouble. At a pond where visitors regularly fed bread to the swans, I saw small children terrorized by swans as big as they were who waddled out of a pond to poke and nip at them, demanding bread.
A peaceable kingdom
Very little of that kind of aggression goes on at the Abbotsbury Swannery and, what little there is occurs naturally between swans competing for territory or mating females.So why does this wild colony of swans tolerate humans so well, and why do they keep returning to nest on this spot?
Habit for one thing. The Abbotsbury swans have nested this way for more than 600 years. They don't perceive visitors as any kind of threat.
For another, as Abbotsbury General Manager John Houston explained, the place is like a 5-star hotel for swans where they find:
- Sheltered accommodation -The Fleet Lagoon is a long, narrow strait that separates Dorset from the six-mile long sandbar known as Chesil Beach. It provides a warm, calm place for swans to court and mate. At any given time, 1,000 swans or more feed and shelter in the lagoon.
- Good Grub Eel grass, the swans favorite nosh, is plentiful and easy to pull from the shallow waters of the Fleet.
- Luxury accommodations Swans, it turns out, are messy, careless nest builders. Left to their own devices, they'll build nests that will fall apart or float away on the first high tide. At Abbotsbury, as soon as staff becomes aware that a pair are starting to build a nest, they provide tied bundles of the estate's own reed - also used to thatch roofs in Abbotsbury village - to lift the pen and her clutch of eggs safely above the soggy ground.
